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Fünf Lieder, Op 48

Recordings

Hyperion’s Strauss Lieder series is fast becoming a worthy successor to the seminal Schubert and Schumann Lieder sets on the label. In this third volume, the wonderful young British tenor Andrew Kennedy performs a range of songs, from favourites such ...» More

A further instalment in Hyperion’s major series, skilfully masterminded by accompanist Roger Vignoles, introduces the American soprano Kiera Duffy. The highlight of this balanced recital is the coloratura Op 68 Brentano-Lieder, which owes its rich ...» More

I did not dream it in my sleep,
In broad daylight I saw it fair before me:
A meadow full of daisies;
A white house deep in green bushes;
Statues of gods gleaming from the foliage.
And I walk with one who loves me,
My heart at peace, into the coolness
Of this white house, into the peace,
Brimming with beauty, that awaits our coming.

English: Richard Stokes

This justly famous song has much in common with the equally celebrated Traum durch die Dämmerung: a gently moving ostinato in the piano part, a companionable walk à deux through the landscape, and—a favourite device of Strauss’s—beginning in a different tonality from that in which he means to continue. In this case, the keyshift perfectly illustrates the contrast between sleeping and waking, and the step into the daylight, with the sharp key of D major again ideal for the densely foliated landscape here described. In a final magical touch Strauss chooses to repeat the two lines beginning at ‘Und ich geh’ mit Einer, die mich lieb hat’. Over a tonic pedal, to the same rhythmic pattern that has accompanied every bar of the song, the lovers walk hand in hand out of sight, and into the ensuing silence.

Ich schwebe, one of Strauss’s most delicate waltz-songs, originated in 1900 from sketches Strauss had been making for an abortive ballet project. Almost a parody of the idiom, with its tinkling parallel sixths and quasi-orchestral outburst at ‘Mein schimmernd’ Aug’’, it is an understandable favourite of light sopranos. At the end Strauss once again employs his favourite device of juxtaposing two different tonalities, making the singer watch his beloved float by in F sharp, before sinking back into a reverie in the home key of A major.

Kling! is set to a relatively insignificant poem by the author of Ich schwebe couched in rather overblown language, to which Strauss gives ebullient expression in celebratory C major, the top As on ‘Sing’ and ‘Heil’ leading inevitably to the final top C on ‘Seele’, supported by the piano’s whole-keyboard arpeggio flourishes.

In these wintry days
When the light is veiled,
Let us bear in our hearts
And confess to one another
What fills us with inner light.

That which ignites a gentle flame
Must burn on and on,
That which tenderly unites souls
And creates spiritual bridges,
Shall be our whispered password.

The wheel of time may roll on,
We can hardly catch hold of it,
Lost to the world’s deceptive light,
We shall on our island
Dedicate ourselves day and night to blessed love.

English: Richard Stokes

The endearing gait of this lovely song surely owes its origin in Strauss’s imagination to an image that only appears halfway through the poem—‘Das Rad der Zeit’—and the whole song resonates with contentment and an acceptance of the turning wheel of time as one year moves into another. The ostinato effect is enhanced by a structural procedure whereby the same material appears a third higher at each repetition until it arrives back at the home key. Interestingly, Strauss used an identical device in an earlier song, Blauer Sommer, only there the process went in descending thirds. Here the effect is to add another cyclical image to the song’s layers of musical metaphor.

Towards the sun
In passionate love
I walk … O rapture,
Who could measure it!
Sprinkled with hoar frost,
The woods gleam with splendour,
The mountains greet
The dazzling light.
Footsteps crunch
In the icy cold,
The mouth’s breath
Forms a ball of vapour …

In contrast to the domestic, interior warmth of its partner, Winterliebe positively crackles with the fresh, sunlit air of a winter morning. Galloping triplets and horncall fanfares add to the zest and to the forward drive of the singer’s constantly rising phrases. Not surprisingly Strauss chose this pair of songs (almost the last poems by Henckell that he ever set) for orchestration in 1918, only a year after he had employed almost the identical music in his opera Die Frau ohne Schatten.